Progressive Discipline

Progressive Discipline is something the majority of us have experienced at one point or another in our lives. Most of us got a taste of it growing with our family, you break curfew and you get grounded for a week, you break curfew time after time and you eventually lose the privilege to go out. Just like when we grew up, our places of employment have rules that enforce the standards set forth by the company or government entity that employees you.

I started my employment started with the United States government when I was 18 years old and currently I’m still employed by the government. I got my first taste of Progressive Discipline in my first week in the Air Force. Every weekend while in boot camp my Air Force flight was designated kitchen duty on Sundays. Our start time was 0500 and not a minute later! We were warned that being late would have consequences. On our first Sunday of duty a few of the trainees, including me, were running late and ended up showing up at 0510. Our drill instructor was upset…he cut down our weekly call time to our families and assigned each one of us a temporary additional duty. In addition he warned us that if we were late again the consequences would be more serious. A few weekends later, we were running late again and were one minute late, we figured since it was only a minute, no big deal…we were wrong! Our drill instructor was furious! This time he took away our weekly call time to our families, assigned each of us an additional permanent duty and told us that next time we would receive a letter of counseling that could result in us possibly being held from our basic training graduation…we were never late again.

After boot camp, I went to technical school in Mississippi and from there went to my first duty station located in Okinawa, Japan. The six years I was there I managed to stay out of trouble; however, my fellow Airman were not as fortunate, from their misfortunate and my eventual promotion to Staff Sergeant I learned and enforced the tools the Air Force utilizes in enforcing discipline. I use the word enforce because in the Air Force only officers can punish individuals, enlisted members like myself, regardless of our rank, may only enforce the rules and use corrective actions to improve behavior. The tools given to enlisted personnel like me are designated to be Progressive Discipline in nature.

I will use an example to illustrate my point; I will use two different scenarios, involving two real life situations I faced as a Staff Sergeant. The first scenario involved Airman “Jones”, Airman Jones had a tendency to always be late for work, even before he officially started working in our section, I ensured that Airman Jones was aware of the rules in our shop including show time for work. The first time Airman Jones was late I asked him if everything was ok and left it at that, a few days later he was late again and this time I pulled him over to the side and gave him a verbal warning, Airman Jones apologized and said it would not happen again. Unfortunately it happened again and this time I sat down with him and gave him a verbal reprimand, wrote a Memorandum for Reference and informed him that next time this happened he would receive a Letter of Counseling. A week later he was late yet again and proceeded to give him a Letter of Counseling and informed him that next time it would be a Letter of Reprimand. I must mention that apart from being late Airman Jones was an outstanding member of our shop. The climax of our story came when Airman Jones showed up late for a Commander’s call, after the Commander’s call I proceeded to inform my Superintendent of the escalating situation and we both decided to sit down him and give him a Letter of Reprimand. This was serious because the next step would be going to see the First Sergeant and Commander. Up to this point, only corrective

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